Scott Sumner on Pop Internationalism

I suspect that Krugman realized (probably correctly) that being the reasonable economist on the left was not enough to prevent him from being dismissed as ‘shrill’ back when he felt he perceived serious injustices and, presumably, radicalized. It is still possible to read Krugman making much of the same policy reasoning that many of his fellow economists do – for instance, backing payroll tax cuts as fiscal stimulus policy – but only buried in dense posts tagged ‘wonkish’, and on his blog rather than column. I guess he prioritizes forming some political momentum nowadays.

So what about Krugman’s international SWF? Well, take a 2006 NYTimes column:

First, the net benefits to the U.S. economy from immigration, aside from the large gains to the immigrants themselves, are small. Realistic estimates suggest that immigration since 1980 has raised the total income of native-born Americans by no more than a fraction of 1 percent.

Second, while immigration may have raised overall income slightly, many of the worst-off native-born Americans are hurt by immigration – especially immigration from Mexico. Because Mexican immigrants have much less education than the average U.S. worker, they increase the supply of less-skilled labor, driving down the wages of the worst-paid Americans. The most authoritative recent study of this effect, by George Borjas and Lawrence Katz of Harvard, estimates that U.S. high school dropouts would earn as much as 8 percent more if it weren’t for Mexican immigration.

Krugman in 1990 might have emphasized the overall increase in income and pushed for more redistribution and immigration – ensuring that the gains are really Pareto gains. He is on the left, after all. But this is politically untenable and so Krugman 2010 goes for what he perceives as politically possible – no immigration given no redistribution.

At least, that’s my pet theory of Paul Krugman.

E.B.,

Well, there was a freezing of some relations for a period of time after Tiananmen, but as you point out, that freezing thawed after not too long a period of time. Of course at that time it was the US (and other countries) challenging what China had done, with China basically keeping its head down and not saying or doing much in response, essentially waiting for the rest of the world to forget about it and get over it and move on, which it did by and large.

For whatever reason, it seems that now there is a much more serious buildup of tension, with the situation being quite different for various reasons, including most significantly China’s much higher relative economic position in the world, as well as its having turned into the US’s main creditor, which it was not at all even remotely in 1989.

Something else going on I think is the reported strong nationalist spirit now around the land among young people in China, most importantly among elite ones in urban areas whom the leadership keeps an eye on. China is not a democracy at all, but the leadership does try to keep ahead of potential dissident movements among such groups, and I suspect that the harder line now partly reflects this widening sentiment, some of which is a result of the regime’s own efforts to find a substitute for Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as a reason to support the regime.

BTW, for those not paying attention, while it has almost certainly done so in PPP terms, China has yet to pass Japan in official nominal terms in aggregate GDP, although it is likely to do so this year, finally.

E.B.,

Certainly there was a lot of tension about the handover of Hong Kong, but that went pretty smoothly
in the end, with much less interference and taking over by the Chinese and altering of the system
in place than many feared. However, I think the backing off from the more serious boycotts and
criticisms over Tiananmen, aside from related to Hong Kong, had pretty much ended by the time you
got there. Important in all that was the fall of the Berlin Wall later in 1989 and the collapse of
the Soviet Union at the end of 1991. Many in the West were hoping that China would also go the way
of the nations of the former Soviet bloc. However, by 1994 it was pretty clear that this was not to
be the case in China, and that in contrast with every country in that bloc, China’s economy was growing
without crisis rather than collapsing and then eventually recovering (with some of those countries
taking a very long time to do so).

As regards the surge of nationalism among urban elite youths, that is a phenomenon that has appeared
since you left. Think of the anti-Japanese riots a few years ago and the more recent ones against
the French over Tibet. Those who long for democracy in China might be as disappointed as those who
long for it in parts of the Arab world, with the outcome if it were to come quite possibly a much
more virulently anti-Western and aggressive regime than the one in place.